It wasn’t very long ago that the idea of government funds helping parents who choose private religious schools for their children was anathema.
It was widely assumed that the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, which forbids government from “establishing” religion, prohibited even indirect support for religious educational institutions like day schools, Bais Yaakovs and yeshivos.
The imagined “wall” separating religion and state—a metaphor first utilized by Roger Williams and later by Thomas Jefferson—was considered impossibly high and impenetrable.
But it was neither.
A historic crack in the barrier arguably appeared in late March 1961, when Rabbi Moshe Sherer, z”l, testified before the House of Representatives’ Committee on Education and Labor, which was holding hearings on proposed legislation that would allocate federal funds to private schools, including religious ones.
The Agudath Israel leader argued in favor of such funding, pointedly noting “that an incorrect image has been foisted upon the American public of the Jewish position on this issue.”
The next day, The New York Times published a front-page story on the hearings, including excerpts from Rabbi Sherer’s testimony (and a photo of him, which presented the world with the image of an erudite Orthodox advocate).
While the bill under consideration didn’t pass, Rabbi Sherer’s testimony, along with that of other religious advocates, shook the ground under the fabled wall.
Rabbi Sherer didn’t live to see the eventual effects of that rumbling. But in 2002, the US Supreme Court, in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, upheld an Ohio educational program that offered low-income parents vouchers for use at whatever schools they chose for their children. The majority in the 5-4 decision held that, as long as funds were offered parents, not schools, and the recipients could choose among a range of both secular and religious places of learning, the program was constitutional.
The Wall Street Journal called the decision a great blow “for equal public education…” as it “stripped away the last Constitutional and moral fig leaf from those who want to keep minority kids trapped in failing public schools.”
But it opened the door to alleviating the tuition burdens of religious parents, by allowing them to access some of the tax dollars they pay to fund public schools they don’t use.
Dozens of states and localities currently have some form of school choice, at least for low-income parents. But last month’s perfect Republican political storm that yielded the party control of both houses of Congress and the big one on Pennsylvania Avenue could herald a new era of school choice nationwide, in the form of a universal federal school choice program.
The President-elect is on record embracing the idea that all American parents should be permitted to choose their children’s schools. One of his platform pledges was “to protect the G-d-given right of every parent to be the steward of their children’s education.”
And Mr. Trump said that the top priority of his nominee for Education Secretary, Linda McMahon, would be to “fight tirelessly to expand ‘Choice’ to every State in America” [upper-case oddities his].
On X, Ms. McMahon herself wrote that school choice “will level the playing field by breaking down barriers of Economic Disadvantage and offering parents CONTROL over their children’s education” [capital-itis is apparently contagious].
A federal choice program already proposed and now likely to advance, the Educational Choice for Children Act, would allow people who donate to local or state scholarship groups to receive a dollar-for-dollar tax credit for doing so.
That would be a major shot in the economic arm for countless frum parents.
Public school teachers unions will, as they have regarding other school choice programs, cry foul. But, despite their claims, school choice on a national level will have positive effects not only on private school students but on those in public schools as well.
And not only because those children “trapped” in public schools will have other options, but also because the very existence of a national school choice program will compel public schools to do better jobs. Competition fuels improvement in education no less than in the marketplace.
Schools are intended to be in loco parentis, “in the place of a parent.” All American parents thus deserve the right to choose schools that reflect their own ideals and values.
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